Flat brick? No thank you.

Okie dokie, time to visit a long neglected area in my humble skill set.
Trust me when I say I would rather not... but I just can't put it off any longer.

Bump Maps/Displacement

Ouch. Can we stop there? That was painful enough. No?
*Sigh*

-Possible end of cutness attempts-

DAZ Studio 4.5

I have a $1.99 brick wall.
When I render at a closer range (not THAT close) it looks extra-ordinarily flat. Like 3D Doom brick wall incarnate.
I tried some shaders (which I know a little about) but of course that replaced the wall with shader brick. Not what I'm looking to do this time around.

I admit I have never played with this area of DAZ and after a brief Google adventure have a basic concept in my head of what I'm actually looking at.

So back to my brick wall.
How can I give it some grit/roughness/some 3d?
Is there a basic, basic, basic step guide/tutorial out there some where that will help my cheap wall (or similar object)?

Thanks!

Comments

Okay first lets say you have a flat brick wall texture. The Bump and Displacement settings are in the Surfaces Tab when you have the Wall selected in the Scene Tab or Viewport. Here is my Brick wall from Daz with the Surface Settings for it.

If your wall did not come with a Bump or Displacement Map you can make one in any 2D art program. First check your product, if you need tips to make a new map for it, just post again here and ask. I'll tell you how.

Okay first lets say you have a flat brick wall texture. The Bump and Displacement settings are in the Surfaces Tab when you have the Wall selected in the Scene Tab or Viewport. Here is my Brick wall from Daz with the Surface Settings for it.

Awesome start, thank you so much.

My brick wall has bump maps but no displacement maps.
Is that a problem?

Can I use the bump maps as a displacement map?
Or do I have to make a displacement map?
And if so... how? :)

Nope, Just open the Displacement section and PICK the bump map to load (load the same file name). Then play with the settings for Displacement. Do some Spot renders until you get the settings you like. Note, High settings can cause the edges to not line up so test the Top or bottom that will be in your render.

I always use a MADE map if I have one, I can teach you how to make one for items that do not have them but I'm not very well right now (Meds are making it hard to think). If we can wait on that until tomorrow I will be happy to show you.

Just a note here. Bump and displacement are both greyscale and are somewhat interchangeable. Because DS supports both, some people will use the two slightly differently at the same time (people can insert comments here on how they use them, and why ;) Bump and displacement maps do not actually change the mesh, just how it interacts with light to give the appearance of dimension.

Normal maps are the ones that are a different beast, they are rgb and do require a separate creation method, and there are many. Normal maps actually change the surface of the mesh at render time.

Bump and displacement maps are fine for things like brick walls that aren't in 'extreme' closeup as our eyes don't really notice the difference in anything less. In distance renders, only diffuse is really necessary in most cases other then to give some variance in the texture to break up repeating patterns.

I like to look at the texture of things irl to notice exactly how much 3d actually stands out of any surface at various distances. It is surprising that it is much less then we think when working on stuff on a computer screen. What actually makes as much of a difference is subtle blur that comes into play irl that is often incorrect if present in computer images. DOF in cameras are a bit crude, at least in DS from my experience compared to rl. I'm not complaining, it's just the nature of the technology at this time. Point is, take DOF into account when looking to get realistic images. Subtle effects are what our minds pick up on that we don't see consciously but tell us if something looks real or fake :)

And displacement done from a bump map is never so good as using a purpose built displacement map, especially in DS, as this reads medium grey as level, lighter shdes come out, or upwards and darker shades go downwards, so you get two way displacment to look more rlealistic.

A lot of people have a habit of makingg bump maps merely by desaturating the texture map, and this is not optimum for bumps, and certainly would make a lousy displacement map.

Edited to add a couple of images to show how a dispacment map works, forst is just the displacement applied to an untextured dress, and 2nd is how it looks with the texture. 3rd shows without the map

Sorry, yes.. displacement maps do alter the surface using a grey scale image. Since they distort the actual mesh they rely on higher poly count to get a decent effect. The render engine actually creates this geometry at render time iirc.

Bump maps change the normals (polys) reaction to light effectively according to a greyscale image. and do not require higher poly count.

Normal maps act similarly to bump maps in that they do not require high poly count to create their effect, they replace the objects original normals with new normals that use an rgb image (iirc) to change the reaction to light in 3 dimensional axis, with each color channel being mapped to an axis. The result of this is that the normal maps get results = or greater to properly done displacement maps from the examples I've seen without the poly count.

Because displacement maps distort the mesh at render time, it drastically effects render time supposedly, haven't tested times yet. I don't remember what comparative times are for normal maps but iirc (and that's an if, I have to test yet) normal maps are much faster rendering and is why they are being used in game engines now.

Displacement maps can be animated to create dynamic effects such as waves etc... I'm not sure about normal maps.

iirc, normal maps take up much more texture memory being rgb vs greyscale so that this can be an issue in some cases, especially as texture memory has to be held in the video card's memory and the trend towards larger texture maps can overload older video cards.

I was being overly quick in my original post and not really thinking about it as much as I should have, thank you for the corrections (and any future ones.) Really getting this stuff down pat requires playing with it which I obviously haven't done enough of ;)

My original point was actually meant to focus on how we often don't see any bump/displacement, etc... in a surface at even moderate distances irl as much as we might think when creating looking at the screen. With this in mind, the point was to encourage people to take the time to notice this when out walking, driving etc... along with the natural blur effect DOF does bring in at much shorter distances and in a much more gradual effect than many might consciously realize.

My original point was actually meant to focus on how we often don't see any bump/displacement, etc... in a surface at even moderate distances irl as much as we might think when creating looking at the screen. With this in mind, the point was to encourage people to take the time to notice this when out walking, driving etc... along with the natural blur effect DOF does bring in at much shorter distances and in a much more gradual effect than many might consciously realize.

I did a little extra reading.
I see now what you mean, I think.
They greyscale/bump/displacement is a nice, quick, easy fix. But ideally a higher contrast between the black and and white will give better results. I will keep that in mind the next project which is coming up soon.

If a texture does not have a bump/displace map, how to create it, please?

There are multiple ways, and this is an advanced topic (how to create.) It isn't something someone can answer in a quick post, although people might chime in to get you pointed in the right direction on things to try.

You can still try the Quick cheat and see if it will work for your render.

Find the original texture for the item. Runtime> Textures> Item name, sometimes artist name. Load it into your Art Program
Convert to Grey Scale image at the highest setting. Now look at your color palette for the item. If it starts with Black and runs to White you should Invert the image. Now save this file as Such&Such;-Bmp.jpg. Go into DAZ and load that file as the Bump map or Displacement map and test it with some High settings. If you get all kinds of texture you do not need go back to the art program and fill all the extra texture areas with the CENTER grey color. Dead center grey is FLAT in DS Bump and Displacement maps.

EDIT: You can also select Areas and Lighten them or darken them as needed.

I didn't mean to be dismissive, but It does honestly take me as long to do a bump map as it does to do a texture map.

I work in layers when I am making my textures (bearing in mind I make clothing textures mostly) I will maybe have 6 layers with elements of the pattern on them, and 6 more layers with the same elements, but manipulated to provide the bump. Displacement can be a different map to the bump map. I do sometimes use both, so the displacement will provide some elements of the style, and the bump other elements, so if for instance I want to put folds in, they will be on the displ map, but something like embroidery will have a bump map.

It really is difficult to decribe without makingo an actual illustrated tutorial, and I am having problems finding time at the mo to make a tutorial. I have promised to do some more tuts, and will get round to them (hopefully).

The one tut that is on my site does give some pointers, but is clothing Click the link to CHohole's Space in my sig bar if you are inteersted, tut is on the index page, so click on enter and scroll down.

For brick, stone, boards, etc...a desaturated texture map (often inverted) is usually good enough. You aren't going for high detail and don't usually need all the fine detail a custom built (cho's method) map is going to give you.